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House of Assembly - Fifty-Fifth Parliament, First Session (55-1)
2024-02-08 Daily Xml
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Shopping Centre Parking

Ms SAVVAS (Newland) (14:48): My question is to the Minister for Planning. Can the minister update the house on any impacts of the Private Parking Areas (Shopping Centre Parking Areas) Act since the legislation came into effect a year ago today?

The Hon. N.D. CHAMPION (Taylor—Minister for Trade and Investment, Minister for Housing and Urban Development, Minister for Planning) (14:49): I would like to thank the member for Newland for her question. What a great fighter for the north-east she is. Today marks the one-year anniversary of the Malinauskas Labor government honouring its commitment to ban paid parking at retail shopping centres. In July 2022, I introduced the Private Parking Areas (Shopping Centre Parking Areas) Amendment Bill into the parliament. The bill was assented to on 10 November 2022 and came into operation on 8 February 2023. Of course, this provided time for car park owners and shopping centre owners to lodge an application to seek approval for paid parking, as well as enough time for such applications to be assessed before any prohibition came into effect.

That act now prohibits owners of regulated shopping centres from charging a fee for parking at major retail shopping centres without approval and that includes any retail shopping centre with a total lettable area of 34,000 square metres or more but of course excludes the Adelaide central business district. It impacts centres like Westfield Tea Tree Plaza and Westfield West Lakes. It is important that I update the house to say that no applications for paid parking under the act have been received by the Department for Trade and Investment over the last year.

This legislation came into force after Tea Tree Plaza's management announced its plans to install boom gates and start charging for car parking, akin to the regime that existed for a very long time at West Lakes. Those plans bit the dust. Significantly, the legislation means that parking at West Lakes Shopping Centre is free for the first time since 2013 and that of course provides much needed relief for South Australians and removes the need for staff to park offsite or to pay for parking.

Most importantly, if you go down to West Lakes today, there are no boom gates. Those boom gates have been removed and of course that is a relief to the people who were impacted: shoppers, local businesses, workers, retailers and their employees. All those people had been impacted from 2013 until this act was introduced. It impacted anyone who was working shifts in the early morning.

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. N.D. CHAMPION: It impacted all those people who were expected to walk across dimly-lit—

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Member for Florey!

The Hon. N.D. CHAMPION: —areas and workers vulnerable early in the morning and late at night to antisocial behaviour, injury, theft and the like. Removing paid parking allowed those people to park onsite. It removed the $35 fee per day that many of those workers were paying and that is $175 a week or $9,000 a year. Bear in mind, retail workers get approximately $48,000 a year, so that is a huge amount of money for those workers. We note that so many of them are relieved, along with the local community.

Members interjecting:

The Hon. N.D. CHAMPION: You can hear those opposite and our young friend, who likes to strike the blue steel pose. I think Matt Abraham referred to it as blue steel, a leadership campaign on Instagram. But we know the Liberal Party opposed this legislation. We know they hate it. We know their current leader said that it seems very popular on the face of it, but can it actually be delivered. That is what he said at the time. Well, here is some news: it can be delivered and it has been delivered.

Time expired.

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